Four horsemen rode out from the heart of the range,
Four horsemen with aspects forbidding and strange.
They were booted and spurred,
they were armed to the teeth,
And they frowned as they looked on the valley beneath.
Then forward they rode through the rocks and the fern,
Ned Kelly,
Dan Kelly,
Steve Hart and Joe Byrne.
Ned Kelly drew rain and he shaded his eyes,
The town's at our mercy,
see, yonder it lies,
To hell with the troopers,
he shook his clenched fist,
We'll shoot them like dogs if they dare to resist.
And all of them nodded, grim-visaged and stern,
Ned Kelly, Dan Kelly, Steve Hart and Joe Byrne.
Through the gullies and creeks they rode silently down,
They stuck up the station and raided
the town,
They opened the safe,
they looted the bank,
They left and were merry,
they ate and they drank.
Then away to the rangers they went with their gold,
Oh, never were bandits more reckless and bold.
But time brings its punishment,
time travels fast,
And the outlaws were trapped in Glenrowan at last.
Three of them died in the smoke and the flame,
And Ned Kelly came back,
for the last he was game.
But the law shot him down, he was fated to hang,
And that was the end of the Bush-Ranging Gang.
But at times when I pass through that sleepy old town,
Where far distant peaks of Strathboge look down,
I think of the days when those grim rangers rang
To the galloping hooves of the Bush-Ranging Gang.
Though the years bring oblivion,
time brings a change,
The ghosts of the Kellys still ride from the range.
Oh,
whatever their faults,
and whatever their crimes,
Their deeds lend romance to those faraway times.
They've gone from the gullies they haunted of old,
And nobody knows where they buried their gold.
To the rangers they loved,
they will never return,
Ned Kelly,
Dan Kelly, Steve Hart and Joe Byrne.